On “Christian masculinity”

Christian talk about what it means to be a man begins and ends with the man Jesus Christ. The church looks to Jesus the Nazarene first in everything, and this topic is no exception. The church does not begin elsewhere, either in Scripture or in tradition or in history or in literature or in contemporary culture. The church begins with the gospel of Jesus, always.

The gospel tells us of the Word made flesh, the man who was and is God incarnate. Jesus contains the fullness of wisdom and knowledge concerning all things, but it is not as though we have to try hard to see the relevance of Jesus to questions about masculinity. We aren’t asking about the capital gains tax or whether plants have souls. The man Jesus shows Christian men what it means to “be a man”—which is an implication of, though not the same as, the claim that Jesus, qua human, shows Christians what it means to be human—and he does so together with the great cloud of witnesses that surround him like so many echoes and images of the one archetypal anthropos. So in answering this question we look first to Jesus but also to his exemplary followers: apostles, saints, martyrs, doctors; Paul and Peter, Francis and Ignatius, Maximus and Cyprian, Basil and Gregory, et al.

What do we see when we look at these men, looking at Christ?

Here is what we don’t see. We don’t see worldly power. We don’t see physical potency. We don’t see wives. We don’t see children. We don’t see virility. We don’t see households. We don’t see possessions or estates or acclaim or family names passed on by sons, generation to generation. We don’t see dominion, rule, or lordship—not of the pagan kind, anyway. We don’t see violence. We don’t see what our culture understands as “manliness,” whether that word calls forth adulation or repudiation.

Here’s what we see instead.

We see dispossession. We see abstinence. We see defenselessness. We see, in worldly terms, powerlessness. We see loss, pain, rejection, and suffering. We see poverty, obedience, and celibacy. We see the end of a family name, the selling or giving away of inherited wealth. We see passivity: being mocked, being scourged, being handed over, being arrested, being tortured, being killed. We see public shame in public death.

These are the marks of the Messiah and, just so, the marks of his holy ones. They do not look like “masculinity” by any common definition I have encountered. Inasmuch as they relate to such a concept, they appear to be nothing so much as its refusal or inversion.

This is why I find myself so confused and repulsed by popular writing about “Christian masculinity.” I don’t reject all of its premises. Many parts of our culture today have made “being a man” a kind of pathology, at the very same time that young men, and men in general, are in dire straits. Our young men—society’s, to be sure, but I have in mind the boys in our churches—absolutely need our attention, our care, our instruction, our help. They need a vision of the good life straight from God. They need a word from Christ that meets them where they are. I am trying to do that with my own sons and with the young men in my classroom. It’s a group effort, and it’s all hands on deck. Let’s work up solutions to this crisis!

Yet invariably when I click on a link or open up a book on the subject, what I find is either pure paganism or a strange alchemy of biblical and cultural ideas about capital-m Manliness. Always such Manliness finds its highest expression in notions like physical strength, protection, procreation, provision, husbandhood, fatherhood, forging a household, entrepreneurship, forms of exercise, diet, hobbies like hunting, and military service. None of these things (with one or two possible exceptions) are bad in themselves. But they have next to nothing to do with a Christian understanding of manhood.

Again, fix your eyes on Jesus. Did Jesus marry? No. Did Jesus father children? No. Did Jesus protect others? No. Did Jesus defend himself? No. Did Jesus own possessions? Not really. Did Jesus build or maintain a household? No. Was he physically or socially impressive? Not by the standards of his day or ours.

Okay, granted, Jesus is the Son of God. What about a mere human man like Paul? Every single answer is the same. And unlike Jesus Paul is explicit that he wishes other believers were like him: sexless, childless, itinerant, and willing to suffer every hardship, including penury and mockery, for the sake of Christ crucified. When the world looks at Jesus and Paul, they see foolishness. The church believes this foolishness is the wisdom of God, but in earthly terms, it is foolishness nonetheless. Paul spends half his letters defending himself against the very sort of accusations the Manliness crowd would throw at him today: What a fool! Unimpressive! Chronically ill, physically disabled, dependent on others, a poor public speaker—who is this man? Why should we listen to him? There are certainly others (call them super apostles) who would make a better impression, not least on pagan neighbors who have reasonable expectations about manly church leadership.

But that’s just why Jesus chose Paul: “for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15-16). As Paul confirms:

on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. Though if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I shall be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:5-10)

Worldly weakness is Christian strength. Human impotence is divine power. Suffering and death are signs of the Lord’s favor.

Earlier this year one author wrote:

A man embodying healthy masculinity knows who he is. He is physically healthy and strong. He is pursuing and developing his skills and capabilities to make him more competent and able to take action. He has a sense of agency, drive, and desire to make his mark on the world.

The indispensable Eve Tushnet replied on Twitter:

a man embodying healthy masculinity knows Whom he loves. he receives the stigmata regularly. he is pursuing and developing his prayer life to make him better prepared to suffer. he has a sense of obedience, humility, and desire to take the last place.

Eve is right. The paradigm of a faithful male human being is Jesus of Nazareth, and he doesn’t measure up to the earthly standards of masculine glory. Read The Iliad and see if you can find intimations of Jesus or Paul there. You won’t. The men of Achaea and Troy win glory and honor through killing other men, begetting other men, taking other men’s women, and plundering other men’s wealth. Neither Jesus nor his apostles does any of these things. Conjure up an image of them, as well as other male saints. They do not have the praise of men. They sire no sons, “win” no prizes (whether in gold or in flesh). The world accords them no honor. The contrast is extreme: They are instead punctured and penetrated, humbled and humiliated. The nails leave scars; the lungs expire; the blood spills; the skin is flayed; the head is lopped off. Jesus dies naked on a tree, to show pilgrims to Jerusalem who’s boss. All while peasant Peter, traitor and coward, weeps alone, away from the action.

These are the men who define what it means to be a Christian man; and they have countless imitators and exemplars who have persisted in their stubborn witness to Jesus’s way down through the centuries. To be sure, it is permitted to Christian men to marry, to have children, to own possessions. But this is the lesser way. The greater way is found in the monastery, where vows of obedience, poverty, and celibacy offer a taste, in this life, of the life of the world to come; a glimpse, in this earthly flesh, of the kingdom of heaven, come and coming in Christ. For in heaven there will be no marrying or giving in marriage; there will be no procreation; there will be no walls or armies or violence, for there will be no need for them. The Lord will provide all that we need. That life, the heavenly life to which we are all destined, is not the calling of all believers on earth, here and now, while we continue our sojourn from Eden to new creation; but it is available to all, and the vocation of some. In them—in those who renounce money and family along with their very autonomy—we see, not a pitiable lower estate, but the highest form of human flourishing this side of glory. What they have now, in part, we all will have then, in full. They are therefore, at present, the church’s models of the good life; accordingly, when they are men, they are models of masculinity. In them we see the Christ life made manifest among us. In them we see just what it means to taste and see that the Lord is good. For all they have is him. To have the Lord alone is by definition to have everything one needs. To have the Lord is to know him, and this knowledge is intimate, even conjugal. The monastic soul, figured feminine by sacred tradition, is betrothed to Christ the bridegroom; she has made room for him to enter, longing eagerly for the kiss of his mouth. In sweet union with him, in utter dependence on him, in total transparency to his will and his action, she is made complete. She is happy, at rest at last.

In a word, the monk of whose soul we speak has finally become what he was made to be: a man of God.